City staff is not pausing enforcement while Boulder considers revising its ADU laws

By Alex Burness

Staff Writer

Posted:
11/01/2017 10:01:17 PM MDT

Updated:
11/02/2017 11:01:24 AM MDT

Keeli Biediger stands in her accessory dwelling unit in the basement of her home in Boulder earlier this month. (Matthew Jonas / Staff Photographer)

Enforcement against illegal accessory dwelling units will continue in Boulder as the City Council considers a revised law that would make some of those units legal, city staff said.

In fact, according to data provided by the city, enforcement activity on that front has been trending upward for several years.

Talks of a possible moratorium — or, at least, a slowdown of enforcement — were accelerated following an Oct. 14 story in the Camera about Keeli Biediger, a south Boulder woman who rents two rooms in an accessory apartment in her basement to a painter and a city Parks and Recreation employee.

Biediger ran into trouble when the city learned that she was failing to satisfy the city's requirement for one parking spot per accessory unit. The options city staff relayed to her, she said, were to either move her house by 2 feet to create room for more parking, or demolish the unit.

But the very requirement that she's violating now could well be abolished in the coming months, as the City Council is primed to review its current policy on accessory units. City housing staff has recommended that the one-spot-per-unit parking rule should be removed, along with several other rules that make creating an accessory unit difficult for many.

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Her story underscored a situation common in Boulder: An unknown but significant number of people have illegal accessory dwelling units, and many of them are waiting on a policy change that could bring them into compliance.

Responding to the Biediger case, Mayor Suzanne Jones and City Council members Matt Appelbaum and Jan Burton held a brief discussion during a council agenda-setting meeting about whether any moratorium, or similar action, was needed.

Though there was some agreement that Biediger's case is an unfortunate one, the council has not discussed accessory dwelling units in recent weeks and is not scheduled to meet again until Nov. 14.

In the meantime, city spokeswoman Meghan Wilson said, "Staff's plan is to continue enforcement activity."

So far this year, the city has addressed 96 illegal accessory dwelling units, Wilson said.

"Staff has been much more effective in enforcing against illegal rental properties," City Attorney Tom Carr wrote in an email to the City Council, posted on Hotline, Boulder's public email forum.

"Although there has always been a belief that there were many illegal accessory units, recent enforcement actions have provided solid evidence."

The 96 cases pursued this year are nearly double the 49 in 2016. In 2015, the city reports, enforcement staff addressed 35 cases.

Several people have emailed the city asking for a pause in enforcement until a new policy is crafted.

Last year, the City Council ordered a pause while it reworked a policy on co-operative housing units, and Boulder did not pursue enforcement against illegal co-ops until a new law was passed.

For now, it does not appear that anything similar will be put in place for illegal accessory units.

But Carr wrote in his email that enforcement staff will try to "minimize the displacement of tenants for remaining lease terms, provided that the owner can demonstrate that the unit is safe and habitable under city life safety and rental license habitability standards."

It does not appear, however, that Biediger is benefitting from the attempted minimization of displacement Carr wrote about.

The city will not be requiring demolition of the unit, but code enforcement staff has "already told her that the current tenants should move," Wilson said, "and our understanding is that she's working on that."

Contacted Wednesday, Biediger said she hasn't heard a word from the city about that, and is not in fact working on kicking out her two tenants.

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